


Feigning Blows

by nonky



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Episode: s03e09 Unfinished Business, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-07-13 23:23:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7142408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonky/pseuds/nonky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Silence and the movements of people unsure whether to flee or freeze filled the gaps between punches.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I think every story about Kara and Lee turns back necessarily to Unfinished Business, but this is my official, specific version. Lee's POV, while he's getting punched, so excuse the occasional moment lacking in sense.

He was afraid to touch her. Kara's skin drew him when she was indifferent. This blaze of her eyes and body lurching and dancing toward him was too hot. He wanted to collapse to hands and knees and just surrender. 

Pride was stupid, hollow and wrong. It kept his spine upright as his feet moved in time with her bouncing goads. She flicked her gloves in come hither mockery, part fight and part flirting. They might as well have been boxing the entire time, because it came down to aroused brawling. 

She always won, even when he got his way. It was Kara's special curse to forever win as she sacrificed what they both wanted for her version of rules. She didn't get to be happy and in love, so she would sidestep and dodge anything real. She sank into his dreams of a life with her, a cannonball into a wading pool. The strike wrecked everything about him for over a year. 

He woke up when the Cylons jumped into orbit, too late to find her and rid himself of the consolations that just didn't work. Lee had dedicated a battlestar to Kara's return, nearly breathless with waiting until he decided he couldn't. He had effectively scrapped half of the fleet's military might to feel he was going personally to bring her home. 

Laura Roslin might have predicted his actions. She was the first and loudest to question why Kara's search and rescue justified burning the fleet's fuel reserves to fumes. The President was also the first to push him into the mould of a hero, either to please her voters or her own anxieties on a desolate unknown planet.

The only thing he'd ever envied about New Caprica was Kara's willingness to go there and make a home. He couldn't get her to come to him from across the bunk room. She was a bright ghost in his house, easily seen, loved and unbearably hard to grasp.

Lee had a sick need to let her follow through on the destruction promised by the gleam of violence in her eyes. He had yet to discover a way she could touch him that didn't give him some thrill of pleasure. He wanted it badly enough not to care about the details.

People - fellow officers momentarily stripped of rank and consequence - cheered them on. Dee was out there, and he couldn't tear his eyes off his opponent to see her reaction. Sam was glaring from ringside, and Lee ignored the signs of wear marrying Starbuck caused. 

Kara started it, like always. He did his best to hold up and show them he was his own man. Her leaving gouged along his self-respect and he'd fought hard to heal. Everyone who ever gossiped about Starbuck and Apollo - Lee always mentioned second like some signature accessory she wore - hid grins when Starbuck shed her wings and became a New Caprican housewife. 

He'd been the fool. She was the wise one replacing him with a professional Pyramid player. It was awful to admit Dee didn't fulfill all the things he'd lost when his best friend rejected him. 

The warm-up was over. Kara swung, hit a glancing blow and he let his body follow her away. Lee punched her, equally horrified and satisfied. He tracked the ripple of bruising flesh along her face. He wanted marks on her. It was a miracle he'd waited for unofficial permission. There were times he'd had to back up to the wall and hold on instead of cornering Kara and Sam like a rabid animal. 

She wasn't looking at Sam now. Kara's head flew to the side and she hunched into a jab he evaded. They forgot to hold in the grunts and moans as the hits piled on without hesitation. His patience got him nowhere. His aggressive disdain called Kara to his side, just when he'd perfected not wanting her anymore. 

I don't want her, he thought angrily. And I'll never want her with the same purity and trust. What kind of emotional cripple settles for acting out love with somebody who'd been absolutely free and open for a single night? Why would I allow myself to be cheated that way?

The referee was gone, and the spectators seemed more and more anxious. Their cheers had stopped. Silence and the movements of people unsure whether to flee or freeze filled the gaps between punches. They were starting to get scared, both of watching more and stopping the fight. 

People rarely dared to step between himself and Kara. His arms wrapped around her, clamping her body to his aching chest. The dance space enclosed them, a cage of arms and heaving ribs. His heart beat harshly in his ears, but he thought they might be hearing one another's blood.

The past didn't matter. None of it mattered. Lee wasn't sure the future mattered. He had dragged Kara back into his arms, bruising her and cutting her skin. He needed to pretend to hate her until they died of their injuries, sprawled on the ring. 

He lost then, head dropped to her shoulder to rest. He let her win, pride falling with every bead of sweat he'd not noticed. Kara could have the universe for her own, bent to her scruples. 

Lee was happy to have his place, watching for the unspoken orders from the set of her jaw. The split curve of her lower lip brushed his face, slack from emotion. Kara surrendered, breath hissing as she whispered. 

"I missed you."

It was like time travel, taking them back to that night at the groundbreaking. Yearning warmed his heart, and he didn't care who won or how they gained their victory. In that moment, he had Kara. 

Lee closed his eyes and swayed with her, slurring his reply.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara was good at embracing madness. She didn't need to explain why it was good Lee was punching her, or why she was hitting him back.

If Lee put all his wasted love into a single punch, he could kill her instantly. 

Kara almost wanted it. That ending, an ending, some kind of atonement or closure to just let her drop all her many acts. Something to confirm all the worst whispers about her character would shut up all her critics and friends. She could prove them right by doing wrong much easier than shocking them by doing right. 

She wanted to pull triggers and watch her own plane explode. She wanted a way to join all the threads of feelings into a beautiful tapestry she ripped apart with her teeth. She didn't even care about an audience. If she painted this, it would be shades of bloody red across a background of deepest black.

They were all watching, some of them not getting the rumbling of repressed emotions underneath the quick darts across the ring. Other faces seemed set in anxious blandness, trying not to be the spark that set off the powderkeg. Dee and Sam were both out there. 

Kara didn't look for them. Lee was focused on her. She could give him that much in return. 

She had named herself God to the nuggets and learned to regret. She was fallible. She was failure personified. She didn't deserve anything from Lee, even his hate. 

I need something, she thought, snapping and taunting despite having no right. I don't know the name of it, but it has to be from him. Lee has to give me . . . 

He wouldn't connect, not really. He threw punches that landed in safe spots, not enough pain to bother. She needed him to put more of himself into hating her. He could strike her hard enough to knock the harshness off her back. She was so tired of pretending to be tough. It hurt trying to seem strong in all her weakest points. 

The Adama men had always felt like her only chance to be a decent human being. She had seen Zac's angelic face - her sweetest student on the first day of a new class of nuggets - and it patched over a part of her soul. It wasn't until she met Lee Kara understood she'd been so close to right. The dry humour but happy laughter was Lee's influence. The shape of his face was just a little more round, less stern by the jaw. She needed a man with edges, sharp to remind her love was dangerous. 

She and Lee were too late the moment they met. 

Kara lashed out, snapping a quick jab before backing off and urging Lee to follow. She wanted to be chased down when she ran, tossed over his shoulder and carried home. She hated him for every moment he'd backed down instead of shouting and grabbing until she listened. 

"Come on," she yelled, muffled by the mouth guard. 

After that it was a blur of motion and reverb, the rattling of her doubts knocked out with every collision with his body. Pain was a minor sensation. She felt warm and happy hitting him in the face. This was the part of their relationship they could justify. 

Kara was good at embracing madness. She didn't need to explain why it was good Lee was punching her, or why she was hitting him back. They could do this all day, shattering every denial. She could feel him, and he was real. He reeled back from her fists, so she was also real. The huge, cloying suffocation of loving him in secret was a pocket of hot, tormented emotion. 

She could fight him until she died, finally peaceful. 

 

"How's the Old Man?" Colonel Tigh asked the doctor quietly. 

Squinting at the ring in the distance, Doc Cottle sucked a big drag of cigarette. He shook his head at Thrace and the younger Adama bloodying each other. 

"He'll be all right, given a few days. Doubtful those two will give him more than an hour before he hears about this idiocy," he said hoarsely. "They're both good soldiers, but this poisons whole decks when they're at war. Their snotty angst seeps out and infects the rest of the crew. The only cure is to keep them away from other people."

Saul chuckled meanly. "Yeah, like that even works. They managed to bring two other people in on it, and they all shuffle around one another like a damn mating dance," he said. "I'd like to quarantine them until they either break up or frak long enough to get it out of their systems."

The few remaining spectators were silent, shifting in anxious clumps as they felt the need to intervene. Sam and Dee had both left the room, and Saul thought they had given up on their respective spouses just in time. 

"If you order it, and give me the quarters, I can keep them for three days," Doc said firmly. "Just give me a crewman to bring food to them and I'll come up with the excuse. It might be doing everyone a favour. Can you keep the Admiral distracted for a few days?"

"I think he might sleep for one. I'll keep him out of it as long as I can. He'll hear about this, but maybe people can keep quiet until he's doing better."

The Dance was decisively over. Kara and Lee were clinging, whispering and crying. It had all the signs of a lasting catastrophe for the fleet, two pilots down with something harder to kill than the most resistant disease. 

"I can't make them different than they are," Cottle told him. "No cure for feelings, and I'm no counselor. Best I can promise is they'll have to look it down the barrel together."

Tigh was willing to risk a bad outcome for an end to this. He recognized the look of a man incapable of not loving a woman who was bad for him. He could care less about Lee Adama, but the fleet couldn't afford Starbuck and Apollo exploding while there was a real crisis. 

"I'll make sure you have what you need. Hide them away somewhere to cool off. And hope like hell they have something resembling honour."

The doctor started walking to the ring, finishing his cigarette regretfully.


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The worlds ended but Kara was the worlds. Nothing ended and no one was ever gone.

He felt new, bloody and raw but alive again. It hurt wonderfully. He would start another fight if anyone tried to dull it with medicine and stitches. 

The Dance reset them to the beginning. They climbed down from the ring as fast as they could, avoiding the doctor. Lee took his limping body to his office and let Kara dab at blood on his face. He had a strange hitch in his breathing. It might be a cracked rib and it might be the urge to cry bottling up in swirls. They followed the way her fingers drew shapes on his cheek much lower than the bloody smear she was cleaning.

Kara's fingers were shaking, her body unsteady as she smiled as wide as her split lips let her. She swayed in his orbit and for once, for frakking once, Lee didn't feel like loving her was chasing a storm cloud. 

Endorphins could make even severe injuries feel like nothing, Cottle was fond of telling pilots when they dawdled getting to Medbay after a battle. Apparently they could reverse time and smooth whole years of memories down to KaraLeestillhere. The worlds ended but Kara was the worlds. Nothing ended and no one was ever gone.

He knew there would be more, later, in aftershocks as reality settled back into existence. He was fine, after a long stretch of misery. 

The infinite possible universes stretched to become infinite probable universes, one of which was his own. So, by extension, if one of those infinite universes had a Lee who had a secure, real, loving relationship with his own Kara, they could be that Lee and Kara. It had to be somewhere, and why not here? Why not him with her right now and forever? Even if it cost them, and even if it killed them, he would pay and die and live in it until the reality collapsed into the fault and ruin they briefly climbed above. 

He was willing to admit at least a couple of punches were enough to have knocked all sense out of him. They were propped on the desk because he wasn't sure which of them would be able to sit down and stand up again later.

The way his whole face ached it shouldn't have been able to warm and ready for her touch. Lee thought he might have just discovered he was a Cylon. He was running on some mysterious engine bigger and stronger than a human heart. It was spinning up like a FTL drive and he was going to fly back to her apartment the first time they met. He would take her hand, pull her in and clutch her madly to himself. He would steal her with all the audacity of a mortal who had just discovered the gods were real and they favoured him to win. 

He could see that sweet, younger Kara imposed over the Kara touching him, and his eyes drifted shut because it felt right to let them melt together peacefully. He could have the toughened love of the present along with the discovery of that first meeting when he realized such a thing as her existed. 

"Lee, don't do that," Kara's voice sounded gently on his forehead. "I can't let you sleep. We beat the shit out of each other. Open your eyes."

He expected to see a table set for three and his brother drunkenly snoring on the couch. She had been in a simple, modest t-shirt that echoed a warm ocean. Softness and barbs, ease and tension lived between them in a web of roots that wouldn't die even when they didn't get water for years. He opened his eyes to bulkhead and a bare shoulder already bruising. The lack of his brother was a pang of loss, but he wasn't disappointed anymore. They had been friends, first, Kara perhaps not even knowing his callsign that night. The fleet had nothing to do with it. 

"I hurt you. I'm sorry," he murmured. "Wouldn't be surprised if the Doc busts in and has the Marines roust us to Medbay."

Kara pulled back with a sigh. "Cottle thinks we're idiots and everyone else is probably terrified of us right now. I think they'll be leaving us alone." Despite the words, she didn't seem regretful. She didn't make a joke or bring up other people. There were no drinks, cards, planes or schedules occupying their hands. She looked straight into his eyes and kept looking. 

"I hurt you, too. I hurt you worst than anything we could do to each other with fists," she said quietly. "I did it on purpose. You were supposed to stop loving me."

Lee opened both eyes as wide as he could, feeling the pinch as swelling fought them into squints. "I can't. I never could, and even you can't make me," he replied. "It would be nice if you loved me back, though. I could use some good news to get me through tomorrow. I'm going to be sore."

She had barely cleaned the one cut, but her arms fell to her sides. Lee looked up and started to tell her it didn't matter, because he had galaxies of forgiveness reserved for anything she did to him. He could wait when limbo had company.

An impossibly young version of himself shivered beneath his skin. He was hanging on words she'd say next. This was the moment they failed to thrive. This was the fracture in the hull, dragging him out to perish in space. Kara turned away and fumbled in the first aid kit, clumsy with the bright red wrapping still covering her palms. 

"I guess I can't be mad at you," she said quietly, ironically. "I can't either."

They stared at each other, bemused. 

"I lo-"

Marines forced the lock and shoved into his office, leading Doc Cottle and denying Lee the words Kara had begun. He was never able to forgive the interruption. 

 

"You both need three days off. Not just light duty," Cottle warned. "If you want to sleep, you should sleep. If you need food it gets delivered to you. I'm not going to order you separated. Don't make me regret it. For frak's sake, don't die in your sleep or anything stupid. For once in your lives, just disappear into the crowd and enjoy being anonymous."

No regulation ever written would allow two officers not married to each other to be discharged to a love nest with painkillers and room service. It wasn't his father's idea, Lee knew. The old man would be disgusted. Sam and Dee were entitled to be murderous. He didn't care. 

It was a gift he would treasure, and die happily knowing Kara was in his arms. It was no less than Cottle deserved for speaking so rudely, she insisted, to find both of them expired in a hidden cabin on his orders.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They were small curled together on a bed, Kara had discovered. She was shorter than Lee by a little span, but it meant she could curl up and her head tucked under his chin. She had measured Lee with her palms, mapped him like a pioneer turned forest into the land for a home. They were both human, and even in the tiny room on the inadequate bed they fit fine.

Lee and Kara stood inside the private quarters, uncertain how privacy worked. They had been so long without bedrooms it seemed odd not to be surrounded by other people. Real quiet invited confession, and neither of them had words.

They were patched up, but too filthy to climb into bed. Lee was beyond feeling bad about using too much water. He turned on the shower and helped Kara strip her bra and tanks over her swollen nose. 

Ridiculously, the closest to guilt he felt was a twinge when she bit her lip and flinched. He shouldn't have hit her in the mouth. She'd been grinning at him, that widest possible expression of Kara at her least thoughtful. The smile like a knife lined up to his ribs, hovering above his heart and daring him to notice.

Lee knew he should have anticipated something like this. He would never stop wanting to kiss her, and it seemed he expressed that as punching her instead. It was cruel to both of them, because he didn't want her to flinch in his arms. He wanted to hold on too tight. He wanted bruising, fatal possessiveness. He wanted it to be mutual, a death pact that made him feel alive.

Her upper body wasn't too badly bruised, though he must have pushed her into the metal joins of the ropes. Cottle had checked their ribs and their lungs. He'd shone light in their eyes and told them despite all evidence they were not brain damaged. 

At one point, Kara had been led away for a pregnancy test she couldn't talk her way out of needing. She hadn't been showing up to take her contraceptives or for any medical care at all. On New Caprica, a lot of people had been looking forward to making families. She'd been married. There was a logic in suspecting Kara might have once been willing to have a baby.

Lee had felt his face twist into a jealous rage. He was ready to crawl to the ring and fight Sam to the death. Everyone still alive from twelve worlds knew the only person who got Kara permanently was him. If she was losing her wings, it had better be for his unwanted, damned little pilot slowing her down. 

Kara would be a better mother than she was anything else, and that demonstration of her skill surpassing and surpassing every mark was almost enough to be satisfied her husband had knocked her up in the eleventh hour of their marriage. In the short time she was gone with the nurse, Lee had managed to convince himself of the unlucky break, talk himself out of being angry at Kara's kid and then at Kara, and by the time she came back he was embracing the idea of helping her raise a child by another man.

"I'm trying to decide if you're destroying your marriage on purpose," Cottle said gruffly. "Starbuck is, but she isn't, just like always. It's not a plan, so she doesn't have to acknowledge it. You do make plans. I don't think you can help it. On the off chance you got swept up in all that Starbuck stuff unwillingly, I can send you home to your wife right now."

Dee had married him in good faith. She was settling, but it probably looked like a steadier, happier life. It hadn't suited Lee marrying for spite and desperation. He'd done it not to be alone. He tried, but he wasn't a good liar. 

When New Caprica was invaded the illusion broke down. He was waiting for Kara. He was waiting for her to get bored being landlocked and walking instead of flying. He was waiting for her to need him. The Cylons gave him a way back, but they forced him to leave her there; cut off from his will to be reunited. 

"I can't help it, Doc," Lee had sighed. "I did my best to be - I did my best. I think I might be insane, but just about her. I feel nothing or everything and nothing was too hard."

Cottle's eyes were hooded as he felt down Lee's stiff neck for swelling in the spine. "Most people would call that being in love, but they make it a point to marry that specific person instead of, say, an innocent bystander. If you're looking for dating advice from an old fleet bachelor," he said caustically. "Use the time I'm giving you to sort it out. Do what you have to do to make it stick or let her go."

They had held hands during the careful walk to the new quarters. They had held hands stepping over the lip of the hatch, best he could do for carrying her across a threshold today. And somewhere in all the observation, the people looking at them and seeing this shameless display of everything he'd been holding in with both hands and every one of Dee's 'I love you's, Lee realized it didn't feel like shame because he'd won.

No one had thought of providing them with fresh clothing. They had put him in private quarters with little more than a bed and the need to get out of their sweaty, bloody tanks. If Lee was more inclined to question it, he'd think Dee and Doc Cottle were working together to honeytrap him with Kara. 

Kara wasn't sweet, but he loved how she tasted. And the convenient guard on the door meant Sam couldn't show up while he was asleep and flatten him like he deserved. 

Lee was beginning to wonder if this was a birthday wish he'd made coming true.

 

The first day was sleep, slumped together in odd angles and badly arranged limbs. It was drooling oblivion and a small amount of head trauma making their waking moments blurry. The second day they woke hungry, dined better than seemed possible considering the menu was algae everything, and touched every mark they'd left on one another. There were months of happy, funny, minor moments of lives they had split ruinously to tell. There were months of stories that mentioned his wife or her husband to be edited carefully. 

No one wanted to be the first to bring in any impediment. They spoke as if the pauses signifying Dee and Sam were slow memories from boxing. They never asked who had been there, or if they had laughed or been angry. Feelings were given broad, watercolour strokes, like hazily remembered days from being students at the academy. Other people had been there, and naming them was beside the point. Maybe those people were dead now, and maybe they just mattered so much less than Lee's hand cupping the back of her neck as he laughed. 

They were small curled together on a bed, Kara had discovered. She was shorter than Lee by a little span, but it meant she could curl up and her head tucked under his chin. She had measured Lee with her palms, mapped him like a pioneer turned forest into the land for a home. They were both human, and even in the tiny room on the inadequate bed they fit fine. 

Loving her had not made his brother's viper crash. Kara loving him back hadn't brought the Cylons to wipe out humanity. They were limited in what could be their fault. They simply weren't capable of wiping out the fleet by cheating on their spouses. 

The universe revolved deceptively, sometimes fooling them into thinking moving fast made a difference. The big movements were happening beyond their comprehension. 

She could choose to love him today. She couldn't even insist Lee love her and make it stick. 

Her shoulders, one of them so bruised she couldn't raise her arm, fell light upon her body. When Lee lifted her, he seemed not to notice the weight of her past. 

 

There were different versions of Lee, and the sweet gratitude lasted only as long as her feet were safely tucked into bed. Kara stood up and glanced at the door, less from a desire to go anywhere than a pondering of how likely their keepers might bring them something more interesting than water.

"That's what I get? Two days. I'm glad I could make your convalescence more comfortable. I hope I get a birthday card this year, but I understand if your husband doesn't want to come to the party."

"Lee. Do you honestly think Sam will overlook my disappearing for three days after that show we put on for the whole frakking crew? I have nowhere else to go."

"That's flattering, Starbuck. I'm finally the man of last resort," he said, shifting pillows and smoothing blankets when she dropped back into bed with him like his fellow castaway.

He'd been trying to enjoy her. Holding her, all the privacy the ship had left available to them, and days without work should have been luxurious. It was temporary and Lee couldn't handle renting Kara. 

Every hour had added a little worry to his shoulders, like putting off homework as a kid. Lee would start summer breaks with a reading list and endless hours of time before he had to pick up a book. He was a quick reader, and could wait a week, then a month. But every day with the task left off, the list stretched longer. Work called him because it was where he'd found self-worth. His duties were something he needed, but Kara had to have some solid place next to him. 

Not holding her at night would ground him as surely as an injury. 

He spoke without thinking, because the question had been burning through to his surface for as long as he'd been without her. It was no more avoidable than kissing her once her mouth tipped up to prompt him. He would wake at his funeral to the coaxing of her lips. 

"That morning-" Lee cleared his suddenly croaking voice. Neither of them would ever be able to say morning and not mean the day after they screamed to the sky. They were still living that day, stretching into eternity until one of them could speak about it. "-why did you choose him?"

He could feel the emptiness Kara clung to chill him through her skin, but he pulled her nearer and fought it away. Her face was so brittle, prettier than ever because he wasn't distracted by anything lively underneath her features. She went pale, still, and careful. 

Lee settled in, hips cradled to hers without any space to wiggle away. He kissed her with a lightness he didn't feel. He could feel love like actual bleeding, a wavering energy that wanted her skin and his to pass it back and forth. 

Kara's mouth pried open, and she managed a tiny head shake. 

"You didn't choose him?" It had felt like a choice. No, Lee thought, it had felt like being murdered and having no one notice. He'd looked down and the knife there was familiar, but his own father simply reported the news as if Kara hadn't been his other half. 

She shifted, her elbow holding her up so she could be off the pillow. She sighed. "I didn't know what to do, and I knew you thought I'd already . . . that I was ready for everything. I wasn't. I was terrified. But I knew Sam was ignoring anything he didn't feel like noticing about us. He'd have been fooled, if I tried to fool him. I barely needed to twist his arm."

Lee nodded. He petted her hair gently. Her fear had been the one thing more obvious than his own gaping wound. He'd scared her, and that wasn't an act of love. It was the only time loving her had brought him shame, because he'd wanted them both destroyed. 

"You bought yourself time," he said quietly. Understanding her strategy was sometimes so simple and other times escaped him. 

"I knew - Sam wouldn't - he - " Kara shut her eyes and her stuttered words became a moment of grief so heavy Lee realized she'd murdered both of them that morning. They'd been sliding along the knife, hearts bleeding out but skewered together. 

He had never been alone. It was horrible, but it could finally bleed freely. The congested feeling in his soul lightened. Kara wouldn't do that to him by accident. She'd done it to both of them on purpose, roping him into her suicide because it was the only way she knew. 

"You could love me after I did that to you," she said. "You wouldn't give up on me, but Sam would. He'd try not to, but he won't forgive this. I lost my nerve. I went for safety. I was so tired of being afraid of you."

She'd been coming up for air, and Lee found himself pressing kisses over her face like he could erase days by continuing to kiss Kara. She dropped back to the bed with a whimper. Maybe all those moments he'd been utterly crushed by her teasing disappearances, she'd been crushed by his rapt, zealous looks. 

It was so strange to hear it was a compliment to be neglected and hurt and believe it. Kara could treat him lightly because he was such a weighty part of her life she knew he'd never really go away. 

Their ways of showing love were so frakked up. He knew they'd have to change everything drastically, but this was a key to starting.


End file.
